Bush Justice Department Finds That Bush Justice Department Was Enagaged In Illegal Activities

Bush Regime's Monica + mentor

A few weeks ago 11 Southern California congresswomen put on a luncheon fundraiser for some of the Democratic women running for Congress from around the country. The wide ideological diversity in members and candidates couldn't have been better encapsulated by the Sánchez sisters, Loretta, the Blue Dog, and Linda, the brilliant progressive. Both are outgoing, well-spoken, inspiring and charismatic. Loretta the Blue Dog seemed to be in charge and running the show but it was Linda who got the loudest and longest applause and most of the best laugh lines. Loretta the Blue Dog wanted to make it clear how important it was to elect more people with the same anatomical plumbing as hers; Linda wanted to have Karl Rove arrested. Loretta the Blue Dog explained why more women members meant something significant-- although the candidates ranged from kick ass liberals like Darcy Burner (D-WA) and Annette Taddeo (D-FL) to Republican-lite insiders with nothing to offer but embarrassment like Christine Jennings (FL) and Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ). Linda, who was cruelly tasked with introducing Kirkpatrick by her Blue Dog sister, did the best she could with what she had to work with but harkened back to the already introduced far more impressive Ohio candidate, Vic Wulsin, actually referring to Vic's hated opponent as "Mean Jean Schmidt," somewhat belying Loretta the Blue Dog's entire plumbing argument.

Anyway, this morning Linda Sánchez, chair of the Judiciary Committee's Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee was joined by Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers responded to the release of the Justice Department's report, "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General." In short, the investigation proves that the word "allegations" need no longer be used in discussing the case.

"Today's report describes 'systematic' violations of federal law by several former leaders of the Department of Justice," said Conyers. "Apparently, the political screening was so pervasive that even qualified Republican applicants were rejected from Department positions because they were 'not Republican enough' for Monica Goodling and others. The report also makes clear that the cost to our nation of these apparent crimes was severe, as qualified individuals were rejected for key positions in the fight against terrorism and other critical Department jobs for no reason other than political whim. The Report also indicates that Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, and Alberto Gonzales may have lied to the Congress about these matters. I have directed my staff to closely review this matter and to consider whether a criminal referral for perjury is needed."

"The House Judiciary Committee's investigation into the politicization of the Department of Justice has been criticized by the Minority as a fishing expedition that has caught no fish," said Sánchez. "This report, which found that Monica Goodling and many other Justice Department officials committed misconduct by violating both federal law and Department policy, adds to a growing public record that this Administration has tainted our system of justice."

The report, released today by the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility found:

• Senior Bush Administration Department of Justice officials, including Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, Jan Williams, and others violated federal law and committed misconduct in basing hiring decisions for career prosecutor positions, details to senior Department offices and immigration judgeships on the applicant's political affiliations and views.

• The report highlighted political cronyism that was "particularly damaging" in a vital counterterrorism post when a qualified expert was rejected because his wife had the wrong political affiliation. Instead a candidate was chosen that "lacked any experience in counterterrorism issues" and who other DoJ officials believed "was not qualified for the position."

• Immigration judgeships were needlessly held vacant for long periods while Department leaders sought to identify politically suitable candidates, leading to a severe backlog of immigration matters.

• Monica Goodling also made false statements to the Department's own lawyers who were defending a lawsuit regarding Immigration Judge hiring.

• A current Department official, John Nowacki, prepared and circulated a press release responding to public concern about these issues that he knew was false at the time; the report recommends that Mr. Nowacki be disciplined.

• Monica Goodling refused to approve several DOJ appointments for an AUSA who Ms. Goodling believed was gay.

The conclusion of the report itself makes it clear why Linda Sánchez is considering perjury charges against Goodling and Nowacki (for starters). No one could possibly look at the report and come away thinking several Bush Regime appointees hadn't broken several laws. In fact, this morning's Washington Post opens their story with the conclusion: "Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general's report released today. Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party."

In sum, the evidence showed that Sampson, Williams, and Goodling violated federal law and Department policy, and Sampson and Goodling committed misconduct, by considering political and ideological affiliations in soliciting and selecting IJs, which are career positions protected by the civil service laws.

Not only did this process violate the law and Department policy, it also caused significant delays in appointing IJs. These delays increased the burden on the immigration courts, which already were experiencing an increased workload and a high vacancy rate. EOIR Deputy Director Ohlson repeatedly requested candidate names to address the growing number of vacancies, with little success. As a result of the delay in providing candidates, the Department was unable to timely fill the large numbers of vacant IJ positions.
We also concluded that Goodling committed misconduct when she provided inaccurate information to a Civil Division attorney who was defending a lawsuit brought by an unsuccessful IJ candidate. Goodling told the attorney that she did not take political factors into consideration in connection with IJ hiring, which was not accurate.

In addition, we concluded that Williams provided inaccurate information to us concerning her Internet research activities.

Because Goodling, Sampson, and Williams have resigned from the Department, they are no longer subject to discipline by the Department for their actions described in this report. Nevertheless, we recommend that the Department consider the findings in this report should they apply in the future for another position with the Department.

In addition, we concluded that EOUSA Deputy Director John Nowacki committed misconduct by drafting a proposed Department response to a media inquiry which he knew was inaccurate. Although Nowacki knew that Goodling had used political and ideological affiliations to assess career attorney candidates for EOUSA detail positions, he drafted a media statement in which the Department would have denied the allegations. Nowacki is still employed by the Department. Therefore, we recommend that the Department consider appropriate discipline for him based upon the evidence in this report.

More pardon prospects for George W. Bush in January. He's sure going to be busy making sure there is no accountability for 8 years of systematic and systemic gross, blatant criminality. And Gonzalez? Anyone remember him? [UPDATE: Conyers does. Are perjury charges imminent? Or just more blather and hot air?]

U.S. attorney John McKay may have been fired for a reason so unspeakably vile that it would be unbelievable--if it didn't involve the Bush regime

"Tom Wales represented everything the American public can hope for from its public servants. He made less money than he might have, in order to enforce the rules that made Americans' lives in general safer, more predictable, and more honorable. He showed that people with many options in life could choose a career in public service. He was a wonderful man. For his commitment, he was murdered, which was in a deep sense a crime against the entire public. The public in general has no way to punish or avenge that crime, but the law enforcement system does. If an administration has chosen to neglect that effort because--as has now been suggested--it didn't want to ruffle feathers in the pro-gun camp, that is as low an act as any we have heard of in modern politics."
--James Fallows, in a blog entry on "The Atlantic Online" today

All weekend I kept meaning to get back to the fairly stunning disclosure in Saturday's Washington Post of a reason apparently offered by that unspeakable punk-shithead D. Kyle Sampson--a supposed policy disagreement--for the firing of Seattle U.S. attorney John McKay [right]. I just couldn't figure out how to pursue, or frame, the story. Fortunately, James Fallows of The Atlantic knew just how.

Dan Eggen began his Post report:

A U.S. attorney in Seattle was singled out for dismissal in part because he clashed with senior Justice Department officials over the investigation of a federal prosecutor's murder, and he was recommended for removal 18 months earlier than was previously known, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews.

D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, told congressional investigators that he believes he may have recommended former U.S. attorney John McKay's removal in March 2005 because of conflicts with senior Justice officials over the investigation of the 2001 murder of federal prosecutor Tom Wales, according to congressional aides and Sampson's attorney.

As James Fallows notes in the aforementioned blog entry (which we'll come back to), Wales "was shot, through the window of his home, as he sat working at his computer late at night." On October 11, 2001, to be exact.

Astonishingly, in all these years, given an event as momentous as the murder of a federal prosecutor, no one has ever been arrested. It turns out, though, that the case hasn't necessarily gone unsolved. In fact, almost from the start, local law-enforcement officials and local FBI personnel identified a suspect. Then, mysterously, the local FBI office had the case yanked away by nameless superiors in Washington.

The local law-enforcement people don't seem ever to have wavered in their belief that they know who the perpetrator is. Incredible as it may sound, there are all too plausible reasons to believe that the Bush administration deliberately derailed the investigation for political reasons.

We'll come back to that. First, here is the reaction to this latest disclosure by John McKay (you may recall that his former supervisor, then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, said of him this week: "I was inspired by him"):

"The idea that I was pushing too hard to investigate the assassination of a federal prosecutor--it's mind-numbing" that they would suggest that, McKay said. " . . . If it's true, it's just immoral, and if it's false, then the idea that they would use the death of Tom Wales to cover up what they did is just unconscionable."

Now for the really ugly part. Fallows explains in the aforementioned blog entry--written from Rangoon, Burma!--that he knew Wales slightly:

He was 49 years old, and he had spent the previous 18 years as a federal prosecutor in Seattle, mainly working on white-collar crime cases. He was gregarious, modest, humorous, charming, vigorous, very active in community efforts, widely liked and admired. A significant detail is that one of the civic causes for which Tom Wales worked was gun safety and at the time of his death was head of Washington Cease-Fire. This FBI’s “Seeking Information” poster issued after his killing is surprisingly forthcoming, even loving-sounding, about the background and virtues of the fellow law-enforcement officer whose murder the agency was investigating. My wife and I did not know him well, but during the two years we spent in Seattle in 1999 and 2000 we met him through his brother-in-law, our close friend Eric Redman, and greatly enjoyed the time we spent with him.

I'm sorry I can't recapture Fallows's agonized tone, and suggest you read his post in full. Here, though, is the gist:

A story last year in the Seattle Times [note: this story reports the takeover of the case from the local FBI office by the FBI in Washington] said this about the case:

Agents have focused on a Bellevue airline pilot as their prime suspect. The pilot had been targeted by Wales in a fraud case that concluded in 2001.

Other reports over the years have emphasized that this same "prime suspect" was a gun enthusiast and zealous opponent of anyone he considered anti-gun. If--as is generally assumed--Wales was murdered for reasons related to his gun safety efforts and his past prosecutions, he would be the first federal prosecutor killed in the line of duty.

As best I have been able to tell from a distance, through the years law-enforcement and political officials from Seattle and Washington state have frequently complained that federal officials in Washington DC were not putting enough resources or effort into the case. The same Seattle Times story mentioned above goes into one of the disagreements. Everyone on the Seattle side of the story remembers that the Department of Justice in Washington DC sent no official representative to his funeral.

Until now, the heartbreak of the Tom Wales case, and the Washington-vs-Washington disagreement over how intensively the search for his killer was being pursued, had seemed entirely separate from Seattle's involvement in the eight-fired-attorneys matter. John McKay, the U.S. attorney in Seattle who was among the eight dismissed, appeared to have earned the Bush Administration's hostility in the old-fashioned way: by not filing charges of voter fraud after an extremely close election that went the Democrats' way. But this weekend's story in the Washington Post, based on testimony by Alberto Gonzales's former deputy Kyle Sampson, suggests that McKay's problems may have begun with his determination to keep on pushing to find Tom Wales's killer.

If this is so, it is obscene. Tom Wales represented everything the American public can hope for from its public servants. He made less money than he might have, in order to enforce the rules that made Americans' lives in general safer, more predictable, and more honorable. He showed that people with many options in life could choose a career in public service. He was a wonderful man. For his commitment, he was murdered, which was in a deep sense a crime against the entire public. The public in general has no way to punish or avenge that crime, but the law enforcement system does. If an administration has chosen to neglect that effort because--as has now been suggested--it didn't want to ruffle feathers in the pro-gun camp, that is as low an act as any we have heard of in modern politics. It would take us back to, say, the murders in Philadelphia, Mississippi more than 40 years ago--but with the local officials trying their best to find the truth and the federal government covering up a crime.

I hope it proves not to be true--and that the dismissal of McKay was "simply" a matter of strong-arm partisan politics. That is what now passes for "good news" when it comes to the Administration's approach to the rule of law.

The problem with the Bush regime is that it's impossible to rule out any behavior, including what Fallows describes as "a truly appalling possibility," one that "potentially dwarfs in outright evil anything said, suggested, or suspected in the whole saga [of the U.S.-attorney firings] up till now. Indeed, the implications would be so appalling, if true, that for now I find it hard actually to believe the worst."

Fallows concludes with the thought that Tom Wales's children "deserve to know the truth." As do we all. And if there's any truth to the new suspicions about the Bush regime's conduct, it's hard to think what punishment would fit the crime.

Former "direct supervisor" of U.S. attorneys says he "will not sit by and watch good people smeared," and has high praise for most Purge-Gate victims

A couple of months ago, thanks to a tip from Michael Froomkin of Discourse.net, I paid tribute to former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey as the man who brought "Prosecutor Pat" Fitzgerald in to investigate the leak of Valerie Wilson's CIA identity. In mattters of law we place great stock in Discourse, who argued that Comey, in his capacity as acting attorney general with the recusal of his boss, AG John Ashcroft,

selected Patrick Fitzgerald because Comey believed Fitzgerald was the best US Attorney in the nation, and thus the best person for the job. (Comey behaved with similar rectitude when he took a principled stand against unfettered domestic surveillance.) And in due course, naturally, Comey got punished for his honesty, being passed over for the top job at Justice [when Ashcroft moved on].

Froomkin called Comey "an honest man" and a "patriot." Now the former No. 2 man in the Justice Department has resurfaced. Yesterday he offered a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee his perspective on the Bush regime's purge of U.S. attorneys. The Washington Post's Dan Eggen begins his report:

A former deputy attorney general lavished praise yesterday on most of the eight U.S. attorneys who were fired after he left the job, testifying that only one of them had serious performance problems.

James B. Comey, the Justice Department's second in command from 2003 until August 2005, also told a House Judiciary subcommittee that although he was the "direct supervisor" of all U.S attorneys, he was never informed about an effort by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides to remove a large group of prosecutors that began in early 2005.

"My experience with the U.S. attorneys just listed was very positive," Comey said, referring to six of the former prosecutors who testified in Congress in March. He added that the reasons given for their firings "have not been consistent with my experience" and that "I had very positive encounters with these folks."

The former deputy AG commented specifically on the fired U.S. attorneys:

Comey was effusive in his praise of several of the fired prosecutors, saying that only [Kevin V.] Ryan [of San Francisco] had serious management difficulties.

He described Paul K. Charlton of Arizona as "one of the best," said he had a "very positive view" of David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, and called Daniel G. Bogden of Las Vegas "straight as a Nevada highway and a fired-up guy." Of John McKay of Seattle, Comey said: "I was inspired by him."

Perhaps most damaging to the Justice Department was Comey's description of Carol C. Lam of San Diego as "a fine U.S. attorney." He acknowledged that he was concerned about Lam's record on firearms cases but said he had discussed the issue with her and did not see it as a firing offense.

Comey said that while he was deputy attorney general he did not have much interaction with fired prosecutor Bud Cummins of Little Rock. But he called Cummins a "good man" in a recent e-mail exchange released yesterday, adding that he "will not sit by and watch good people smeared."

Comey's comments made clear that the claims by the nitwit hacks put in positions of staggering authority, claims that Comey had been involved in the screening of U.S. attorneys for removal, are the usual Bush regime bullshit.

Comey testified that he had a 15-minute conversation with [Kyle] Sampson [then chief of staff to AG Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales, and the stupefyingly unqualified thug apparently--and incredibly--given the power to fire U.S. attorneys] in February 2005 about prosecutors Comey considered weak performers. He said he had no idea until recently that the conversation was related to an effort by Sampson and the White House to identify and remove prosecutors considered insufficiently loyal.

With regard to the new allegations that Bush regime Justice bimbo Monica "Miss Fifth Amendment" Goodling illegally screened candidates for assistant U.S. attorney positions for political loyalty,

Comey said it was "very troubling" to hear allegations that political considerations may have been taken into account in the hiring of assistant U.S. attorneys, or AUSAs.

"I don't know how you would put that genie back in the bottle, if people started to believe we were hiring our AUSAs for political reasons," he said.

HEGDISH, PART 2: LIMBAUGH WARNS BUSH NOT TO GIVE LIBERALS THE HEAD OF ALBERTO GONZALES (HE REALLY SAID THAT)

Before we get to the drug-addled radio propagandist, we have a new character, apparently another designated fall-guygal, to throw into the Purge-Gate mix, Sara Taylor. She's a top aide of Rove's and she's just been voted off the island in an attempt to save his fat ass. Facing a subpoena, she was "identified [by Sampson] in yesterday's hearing with a former top Justice Department official as seeking the resignation of a US Attorney in Arkansas." She, along with Scott Jennings, another of Rove's sleazy criminals inside the White House, were the ones who, at Rove's behest, got rid of U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in Arkansas to place a completely incompetent political operative and Rove crony, Tim Griffin.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 2 others from Rove's little shoppe of horrors, Peter Wehner (Bush calls his memos Wehner-grams) and Barry Jackson, although they're trying to paint them us unrelated to the Purge-Gate scandals. Just a coinkydink!

Reading the transcript of Limbaugh's show is excruciating since is just lie upon lie upon distortion upon half-truth upon lie. Let me save the rest of you the effort: "I'm at a loss to understand why it is that even some people on our side and the conservative media think throwing Gonzales away is going to stop this. Now, they'll say, 'Well, that's not what we're trying to do. We want competence. We are conservatives, and we have high values, and high standards.' This is a battle going on here. There's an election that's going to hinge on stuff like this, and everybody the administration throws overboard is a tantamount admission to people that pay scant attention to politics there's all kinds of corruption going on in there." So the hell with competence, high standards, a sense of values? Let's just win the election? LOL! What he smoking snorting?

Limbaugh, someone who hates democracy so much that he can't control himself from heaping disdain on it and on the "common folks." He must have had an extra dose of whatever he's on lately today: "USA Today's got a poll: 'Do you think something's wrong about the firing of eight US attorneys?' 72% said yes. 72% of the American people, a bunch of blithering idiots who have no idea what they're talking about, but yet they voted, so these polls matter." He's not alone The Carpetbagger Report calls some more right wing propaganda agents out on the carpet. Mark Levin "goes on to say that questioning Gonzales' fitness for office is 'throwing your own people to the liberal wolves,' 'disloyal,' and 'self-destructive.' He describes conservatives who take this scandal seriously as offering a 'pusillanimous' response." There's no end. Well... today's NY Times editorializes about the end that they see.

If Mr. Sampson was trying to fall on his sword, he had horrible aim. In testimony that got so embarrassing for the White House that the Republicans tried to cut it off, Mr. Sampson simply ended up making it clearer than ever that the eight prosecutors were fired for political reasons.

He provided more evidence, also, that the attorney general and other top Justice Department officials were dishonest in their initial statements about the firings.

Mr. Sampson flatly contradicted the attorney general's claim that he did not participate in the selection of the prosecutors to be fired and never had a conversation about "where things stood." Mr. Sampson testified that Mr. Gonzales was "aware of this process from the beginning," and that the two men regularly discussed where things stood. Mr. Sampson also confirmed that Mr. Gonzales was at the Nov. 27 meeting where the selected prosecutors’ fates were sealed...

The administration insists that purge was not about partisan politics. But Mr. Sampson’s alternative explanation was not very credible-- that the decision about which of these distinguished prosecutors should be fired was left in the hands of someone as young and inept as Mr. Sampson. If this were an aboveboard, professional process, it strains credulity that virtually no documents were produced when decisions were made, and that none of his recommendations to Mr. Gonzales were in writing.

It is no wonder that the White House is trying to stop Congress from questioning Mr. Rove, Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and other top officials in public, under oath and with a transcript. The more the administration tries to spin the prosecutor purge, the worse it looks.

UPDATE: REPUBLICANS ARE SO CRUDE... ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ATTACK EACH OTHER

Congressional Republicans have no faith in Bush as a man of his word. (LOL-- about time; join the rest of the human race.) He's asked them to go out and defend serial liar and cover-up artist Abu Gonzales and all they can remember about the last time he bothered them about defending one of his indefensible inner circle-- Donald Rumsfeld-- is that he waited 'til they had all made public spectacles of themselves and then fired Rumfeld, leaving them all looking even more clueless than usual. According to today's SFGate a former Republican aide claims GOP congressmen are responding differently this time: "Don't ask me to put whipped cream on that turd pile." Gonzales is said to be in talks with high-level officials (presumably Rove) about the most graceful-- useful?-- way of committing political hara-kiri.

Meanwhile Bush said today he has "100 percent confidence" in Gonzo, usually a sure sign someone is about to get shit-canned in this Regime. Snarlin' Arlen (R-PA) made a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association and he made it clear he'll probably urge Gonzales to resign after his April 17 testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee. "A number of Republicans, as well as all the Democrats, have called for his resignation, and I won't do that until he has a chance to testify. Attorney General Gonzales has his work cut out for him." (Giggles were heard throughout the audience.) Specter went on that he had told Gonzo last week that "you're going to have to explain why you said you weren't involved in discussions [about firing the U.S. attorneys] when the e-mails show you were at [the] meeting where the U.S. attorneys were talked about."

KYLE SAMPSON GETS HIS FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME-- MORMON MAFIOSO SHUN THE SPOTLIGHT BUT HE DIDN'T HAVE MUCH CHOICE

I have to ask my friend Jimmy how to spell the Yiddish word hegdish, since my grandma passed away and he's the only person I know who's fluent in Yiddish. And it's the perfect description for what the whole U.S. Attorneys scandal has degenerated into-- between kilograms of contradictory e-mails, lies from every direction-- well, actually all the lies are from one direction-- to Bush scheduling a snap press conference to get the media's attention off Sampson's testimony, and the wingnuts demanding the Senate hearings stop for no reason that even they were able to communicate... A hegdish Jimmy has confirmed is "a disorganized mess."

So let's see what I can make out of this whole... hegdish today. Fox "News" had a cute quote from Kyle Sampson (one of the Rove-controlled Mormon Mafia guys who used to be Gonzo's chief of staff and is the designated fall guy for this and was testifying today): "The decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the president." Ummpphh... that must've hurt but, did you notice, no Rove?

Roll Call says Sampson's testimony, when it wasn't being systematically interrupted by Republicans, is "likely to ratchet up the pressure" on Abu Gonzo to resign. "His former top aide, directly contradicted his old boss in testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee." Questioned by Schumer about Gonzo's assertions that he wasn't involved in any of the discussions about the firings, Sampson said "I don't think it's entirely accurate what he said... I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign." Schumer nailed him and John Cornyn's (R-TX) pathetic attempts at a whitewash were laughable and sounded rehearsed.

Oops! Dana Bash on CNN's American Morning thinks those... um.. Inaccuracies are at the root of all the fuss the senators are making. "That is really what is making Democrats and even many Republicans very upset here... the fact that they feel that they got misleading, even flat-out wrong information from top Justice officials about what went on." Well, everyone is supposed to tell the truth to make a democracy work right, right? Especially like the chief law enforcement officer.

CNN had David Igelsias, the fired U.S. Attorney from New Mexico on the air doing commentary. He was excellent and didn't agree at all with Sampson's assertion that "the distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a U.S. Attorney is, in my view, largely artificial. A U.S. Attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the Department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district important to effective leadership of the office, is unsuccessful." Iglesias pointed out that he's never been a U.S. Attorney and that, basically, he didn't have any idea what he was talking about."

I don't think Sampson wanted to come on and say that "the decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the president." He wanted to say-- and this was what was in his prepared remarks distributed to the press in advance: "The decision to ask [the U.S. attys to resign] was the result of an internal process that aggregated the considered, collective judgment of a number of senior Justice Department officials [groupthink]. I would be the first to concede that this process was not scientific, nor was it extensively documented. ... But neither was the process random or arbitrary. Instead, it was a consensus-based process based on input from senior Justice Department officials who were in the best position to develop informed opinions about U.S. Attorney performance."

Republican Senator George Voinovich told the Columbus Dispatch that Gonzales should resign "if politics had a role" in any of this. "This is a serious issue. We need to get to the bottom of it. If what some people say is true, then Gonzales should go." The Regime seems to have two related goals here-- making believe politics wasn't at play and shielding Rove (which is really just one thing, actually). So why, exactly, did Sampson want to fire Patrick Fitzgerald? He says he doesn't know why and that when he suggested it he may have been playing a joke on Harriet Miers. Ha Ha Ha.

WHY ISN'T BRETT TOLMAN IN PRISON YET?

There may be legitimate reasons why Brett Tolman isn't in prison; I'm not sure. But there are certainly none that would explain why he is still the U.S. Attorney for Utah. Yes, another U.S. Attorney-- but one, unlike crimebusters Carol Lam, David Iglesias, John McKay, etc-- that wasn't fired. In fact, if not for Mr. Tolman none of them would have been fired. But that goes back to his old job when he was a staffer for Arlen Specter at the time when Specter was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Tolman was a counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee when they were reauthorizing the so-called "Patriot Act" in 2005-06. He reported to Snarlin' Arlen-- or at least that is what Specter believed. Specter was unaware of the Bush Regime's tight-knit "Mormon Mafia" operated by Karl Rove at the heart of the U.S. government. He learned the hard way.

One night, before passage of the bill, Tolman surreptitiously inserted a paragraph into the legislation that basically removed Senate oversight and approval of replacements for U.S. Attorneys. Tolman didn't ask Specter and didn't tell Specter or, as far as we know, any other senators. He just snuck it into the bill and none of them knew they were voting for that provision. Is that embarrassing, or what? I think so. And I think it plays a role in why the senators have been pretty mum on this episode. And what made it worse is that the Senate unanimously approved Bush's nomination of Tolman, soon after... as U.S. Attorney for Utah!

When Specter finally did discover he had been duped by Tolman and tried to get to the bottom of it, all he was told was that Tolman had acted on behalf of the Justice Department! No names. The question remains, did Rove tell Tolman to do it directly or did he use Gonzales as his messenger boy?


Today it was revealed that the Saudis have turned their backs on BushCo. That leaves one base of support, the Mormons, right? Well... not so fast. Utah may be the reddest of the red states-- and the lowest information state anywhere-- but even there things are turning around a bit. A poll in the Salt Lake City Tribune has some bad news for the Bush Regime. Like the Saudis, the Mormons have about had it with Bush's disastrous war and catastrophic occupation of Iraq.

In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush's war management. That's a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah's non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it's also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier.... Such abrupt moves in group opinion are uncommon. Pollsters say numbers generally move gradually, unless "spooked" by something.

Rove, who went to high school and college in Utah and first got into political campaigning working for Senator Wallace Bennett (R-UT), operates a virtual "Mormon Mafia" out of his White House office, recently uncovered by our own Karen Allen while she was investigating Kyle Sampson, another in Rove's web, for Down With Tyranny.

Oddly, after Tolman had rendered his little service to Rove at the Judiciary Committee, it appeared that Rove was backing Sampson for the U.S. Attorney gig-- although with Rove, appearances are almost always deceptive. It was Utah Senator Orrin Hatch who was behind Tolman, a protege of his, and Hatch seems to have come to terms with Rove.

A few weeks ago Karen Tumulty flagged this in Time as a potential problem for Gonzales and the Bush Regime-- twice. No one seems to have bitten. It's difficult for me to understand-- beyond their own embarrassment-- why senators, particularly those on the Judiciary Committee, have failed to haul Brett Tolman's ass in and find out who exactly gave him the order to insert the secret paragraph into the Patriot Act in the dead of night. Once that is cleared up, I believe the rest of Purge-Gate will fall into place.


ANOTHER DoJ DOCUMENT DUMP SHOWS MORMON MAFIA MEMBERS UNDERMINING OUR ENTIRE SYSTEM OF JUSTICE

Kyle Sampson, another of Rove's pet Morman Mafioso, was the one who misled Congress about the role Rove played in the firing and replacing of 8 (or more) U.S. Attorneys and thoroughly politicizing the U.S. justice system. The DoJ is calling Sampson's willful and premeditated deception a case where officials "may have provided inaccurate and incomplete information."

IS THERE A MORMON MAFIA BEHIND KYLE SAMPSON? OR JUST A NETWORK OF FAR RIGHT EXTREMISTS?

Karen, the head of DWT's Mean Jean Schmidt Department, had a slow news week with Mean Jean keeping a low profile after the vomit incident. So Karen started tracing some of the friendship webs that have been behind Kyle Sampson's otherwise inexplicable rise to power. Karen discovered a network of wingnuts, many of whom are Brigham Young University alumni and believers in the large and wealthy Mormon cult, who recommend and protect each other. Their cabal has been fueled by a huge influx of patronage from the Bush Regime. (It helps explain why Utah is the last remaining state in the entire U.S. where Bush is viewed as doing a good job as president.) Karen pointed out to me that there is no comparable network among, say Methodists who graduated from SMU, or among any other sect or religious group, although I hope some time she will take a look at the highly secretive Opus Dei sect for us.

STRANGE CONNECTIONS

by Karen Allen

In the ongoing matter of the seven US Attorneys being fired for political reasons, it’s interesting to look at the threads and knots beneath the tapestry.  As an example, let's take a look at Kyle Sampson, who recently resigned his title as Chief of Staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.  Sampson didn't quit, he just gave up his title. Today, he is still drawing his full salary at the Department of Justice.


Two of Sampson’s, and relatedly Gonzales', most staunch supporters in the media have been Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). The relationships of these men and others who are outspoken for Sampson run deep and mysteriously.

Sheldon Bradshaw, a former Bush deputy US Attorney General and now Counsel in the Food and Drug Administration, says Sampson has "an outstanding legal mind." Bradshaw is said to have slowed down the prosecution of tobacco companies by the FDA. Bradshaw also is first counselor to Kyle Sampson, in the same ward (district) where Sampson is the bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City. Sheldon graduated from Brigham Young University.

Corrine Larsen Bradshaw worked for Senator Orrin Hatch. Mrs. Bradshaw is the wife of the above Sheldon Bradshaw. She also was legislative director for Utah Senator Robert Bennett.

Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is a good friend of Sampson’s and was a classmate of his in law school. It was Elizabeth who is said to have put a word in with her father to get Sampson a top job in the Bush administration. Hatch was also instrumental.

Sampson practiced law in Salt Lake City until 1999, when he then began working in the office of Senator Orrin Hatch.

Brad Berenson was an associate counsel to Bush in the first term. He states Sampson has "a shrewd political talent."  Berenson is now Sampson’s lawyer in the US Attorney matter now under Congressional scrutiny.

An email released in the document dump this past Thursday suggests Sampson as early as 2005 may have tried to push US Attorney for Utah Paul Warner out of his job so Sampson could then be appointed US Attorney. Warner did leave his position in 2006 to become a federal magistrate.

The job in Utah as US Attorney was given to Brett Tolman, a former Senate Judiciary Committee staff member to  Senator Arlen Specter, who Specter now blames for inserting the stealthy, last-minute paragraph into the Patriot Act renewal in March, 2006, permitting Bush to appoint US Attorneys without congressional approval. In essence, Tolman wrote and surreptitiously inserted the paragraph in the Patriot Act renewal that enabled him to get the job as US Attorney.

Another Utah resident, Taylor Oldroyd, now with the US Dept. of Agriculture, wrote a piece in an issue of the Brigham Young University alumni magazine, saying that he and other Sampson friends now have jobs in the Bush administration.

Brigham Young University recently removed Kyle Sampson’s photo from its online alumni magazine so that members of the media would not have access to it.

Bush nominated Charles R. Christopherson, Jr. to be chief financial officer of the Department of Agriculture. Christopherson graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Timothy Flanagan, a friend of Sampson’s, was named as US Deputy Attorney General, despite opponents pointing out that Flanagan had no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. Flanagan previously worked at the disgraced Tyco Corporation. Flanagan is another Brigham Young alumnus.

Michael O’Neil is Chief Counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee (see Brett Tolman, above).  O’Neill also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Thomas Griffith was appointed to the DC Circuit Court, which hears appeals from the US District Court and reviews the decisions of a number of administrative agencies. Griffith also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Robert Clive Jones was nominated by Bush to the federal District Court judgeship. Jones also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Jay Bybee became the judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, nominated by Bush. Bybee listed one of his passions as serving the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, an international professional organization for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Bybee also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Ted Stewart, former chief of staff to the governor of Utah, was confirmed as a federal district court judge.

Utah District Court Judge Denise Posse-Blanco Lindberg testified on behalf of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts at his confirmation hearings. She was appointed to her state court position by Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt, whom Bush chose as Secretary of Health and Human Services. She graduated from Brigham Young Univ.


Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) has said no one has been able to show that any corruption was involved in the US Attorney firings. Yet each day it becomes more obvious as a fact that politics was the only involvement in those firings, directly by the Department of Justice and the White House. Cannon further states there is "nothing wrong with firing attorneys for the reason of politics."

Dick Cheney will be this year’s commencement speaker at Brigham Young University.

Is this making your head spin yet? There is much, much more!

If the Bush regime was to throw the Decider's boy toy Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales overboard today, would his itty-bitty carcass make a splash?

It's a symptom of how clueless the Bush regime has become in its second-term wheels-fallen-off-the-bus phase that the "brains" there imagined, however briefly and half-heartedly, that they could contain the scandal of the purging of select U.S. attorneys by throwing Idiot Al the AG's chief of staff, Kyle Sampson (whose picture, by the way, seems to have been stripped out of Brigham Young University websites that once showed it proudly), to the sharks.

"Hey, it's worth a shot, no?" you can imagine the regime "brains" squealing even as they put their underlings to work concocting a Plan F, G, and H. "If nothing else, it'll buy us a news cycle's worth of time while we come up with some other way to change the subject, and who knows? Maybe by then nobody will still care."

Sampson is by all accounts the kind of worthless-punk scumbag that authoritarian regimes depend on: a thoroughly degraded and repulsive human being with no attributes except a cosmic ambition for power matched by a cosmic ruthlessness and servile doggedness. (We don't even have to look to his Mormonism to flesh out the picture of an out-and-out thug with a law degree on the make.)

We already know that our Kyle was angling to have himself installed as a U.S. attorney, a job for which he is lacking every imaginable qualification except that aforementioned law degree. The fact that no one in the upper echelons of the regime responded instantaneously, "The little shithead's either kidding or out of his frigging gourd," may tell us all we need to know about the regime's attitude toward U.S. attorneys, and indeed the entire Justice Department: In the regimists' view, the job of the Justice Department has nothing to do with justice, or fair application of federal law; it's only about furthering our political agenda--protecting our guys, no matter how crooked, and screwing theirs, no matter how innocent.

In most accounts, the slot into which our Kyle would have most comfortably fit was Karl Rove's. He was actually proposed as Karl's successor when it looked as if the then-minister of policy and propaganda (before he had the policy portfolio officially taken away, though one can wonder if the change was anything but titular) might have to be shelved for leaking Valerie Wilson's CIA identity. To give our Kyle his due, there's no question, from the e-mail trail we've already seen, that he was in the thick of planning and executing the U.S.-attorney purge, but it seems equally clear that, for all his skillful clawing and scratching, he was still way too far down on the food chain to qualify as more than a henchman.

Uncomfortably for the regime, Kyle's mouthpiece, Bradford Berenson, has been signaling that his client isn't necessarily inclined to go quietly--even after (as we now know) Idiot Al worked his tiny tushie off to find a place at DoJ for Kyle after his "resignation" as chief of staff. It's natural that attention should focus next on the idiot AG himself, but I've been trying to argue that in the regime's chain of ideas, he's still too humble a figure to make a proper target. He is so totally the Idiot George's hand-held stooge that it's doubtful any of the real power players in the regime think of him as anything but a less-well-behaved presidential pooch than the far abler, more principled and in general more highly respected Barney.

If it becomes necessary to throw Idiot Al overboard, I can't imagine that anyone in the regime would feel even a twinge except the Decider himself, who would be deprived of one of his last playmates from home. Luckily for him (though not so luckily for the people who unaccountably expect a showing of loyalty from him), he seems to have a pretty easy time getting over such rare twinges of conscience as he becomes aware of.

Even the wingnutosphere seems cheerfully resigned to the dumping of Tiny George's even tinier boy toy, though not without the ritual head-firmly-lodged-in-ass smear, namely the preposterous proposition that Idiot Al was more qualified to be AG than Janet Reno, an expression of the loony right's unfailing scum-sucking dishonesty and imbecility, reflecting:

(a) on a scale of zero to a zillion, absolutely zero knowledge of Idiot Al, and

(b) on a scale of zero to a zillion, absolutely zero knowledge of former AG Reno, and

(c) on a scale of zero to a zillion, an infinity of in-the-shallow-depths-of-their-souls loathing for everyone and everything that is intellectually or morally superior to them, meaning everyone and everything except their lying, brain-dead selves.

It would certainly be embarrassing for the regime to have to heave its attorney general over the side. But the fact is that beyond that momentary embarrassment, losing Idiot Al costs them almost nothing. The Justice Department will continue to run as the fiefdom of the regime's political masterminds (after all, neither Idiot Al nor his predecessor, "Honest John" Ashcroft, seems to have had much of a voice in the regime's policy-making), with just the additional complication of having to come up with an official replacement who can get through Pat Leahy's Senate Judiciary Committee without being laughed out of the room.

One of the people who gets it, not surprisingly, is Washingtonpost.com's peerless Dan Froomkin. Earlier today, while waiting for his Monday post to appear, I was catching up on his column from Friday, "The Politics of Distraction," and as usually happens, Dan sounds even smarter with the passage of time.

"As far as the White House public-relations machine is concerned," he started out--

here is all you need to know about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year: The Justice Department made some mistakes in how it communicated that those prosecutors were let go for appropriate reasons. And, oh yes, there is no evidence that White House political guru Karl Rove ever advocated the firing of all 93 U.S. attorneys previously appointed by President Bush.

But from the very beginning of this scandal, the central question has been and remains: Was there a plot hatched in the White House to purge prosecutors who were seen as demonstrating insufficient partisanship in their criminal investigations?

Everything else is deception or distraction.

After reviewing the latest developments, Dan concluded:

As I first wrote in Tuesday's column, the proposed housecleaning of all 93 U.S. attorneys is a red herring. Not only would firing all of them have been a political and logistical nightmare, but it would have been foolish from Rove's point of view. After all, the vast majority were apparently behaving exactly as he wanted -- as "loyal Bushies."

The key question, that the White House continues to duck: Did Rove approve of -- or perhps even conceive of -- the idea of firing select attorneys? And if so, on what grounds? The latest e-mails certainly indicate that he was involved very early on.

Right now, Washington is engaged in feverish speculation about whether Gonzales is in his last days, or even moments, as attorney general. But as I wrote in my Wednesday column, Gonzales is a diversion.

The mainstream media was slow to get hot on the trail of this story. . . . But now, the mainstream media is in danger of getting distracted by the White House razzle dazzle -- and, quite possibly, by the spectacle of Bush throwing Gonzales, one of his oldest friends, overboard.

Keep your eye on Karl Rove, people.

Keep your eye on Karl Rove, people. It was good advice on Friday, and it's good advice today.

The good news is that I don't think Senator Leahy is going to need much persuading.


UPDATE: NOR IS SENATOR SCHUMER

Crooks and Liars has it in black and white living color: Chuck Schumer says he has evidence that Gonzales lied under oath. The "under oath" part is what differentiates him from some of the other top dogs-- not Barney-- inside the Regime, who have been very careful to never swear to tell the whole-- or any part of-- the truth about anything. Schumer, in fact, told Meet the Press that the evidence is "overwhelming." So, while the Regime has been busy trying to smear the U.S. attorneys they fired for political expediency, Speaker Pelosi speaks for the majority of Americans when she announced today that "we need a new attorney general."

Now, back to Ken's point... what about Rove?

Update by Howie (And that was even before Schumer got Sampson to roll over on Gonzales.)

THE IRONY! THE IRONY! JERRY LEWIS SAID HE WOULDN'T GO DOWN ALONE, SO THEY FIRED CAROL LAM... & NOW KYLE SAMPSON SAYS HE'S NOT GOING DOWN ALONE EITHER

Tomorrow's New York Times has an ominous-- ominous for the Regime-- article about how Gonzales' fired chief of staff has no intention of being the fall guy for the Bush Regime on the politicization of the entire justice system of the United States. His lawyer, Brad Berenson, warned: "Kyle did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys. The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing this subject since the election was well known to a number of other senior officials at the department, including others who were involved in preparing the department’s testimony to Congress."

As the always perceptive Julia from Sisyphus Shrugged mentioned to me, "they just don't make Republican fall guys the way they used to." And Berenson is more than just some over-priced Washington shyster hustling to be part of the growing cottage industry of defending an ever-expanding array of Republicrooks being hauled before the bar of Justice. His last job as an associate counsel to... Gonzales, when he was Bush's White House attorney.

But don't start feeling sorry for Sampson. He's a vicious little monster who's badly in need of a silver stake. He was the GOP choice for replacing Rove as Lord High Executioner. According to Al Kamen in the Washington Post the Republicans have been grooming ole Kyle-- who even looks a little something like that the fat-faced Rove. "...there had been much concern last week that he [Rove] also might have to resign as a result of Fitzgerald's probe. The loss of Karl's familiar presence-- he's the last of the original "Iron Triangle" of Bush's Texas advisers still in the White House-- would have unsettled many younger aides. Fortunately, there's a ready replacement: D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and formerly in the White House counsel's office. Maybe not exactly the same as Karl but..."

Libby Spencer over at The Impolitic scrutinizes and dissects the Regime's maneuvers to try to keep Gonzales, not to mention Rove, from having to resign. Sheryl Gay Stolberg tried to do the same thing at the New York Times, just not as well.

On a day when the main figure in another scandal, Valerie Wilson, was all over the airwaves with her testimony before a House oversight committee, the controversy over the prosecutors was yet another reminder for the Bush administration of the harsh realities of life under a Democratic Congress. Mr. Rove was at the center of that scandal as well, leaving some Republicans saying they feel as if they have seen this movie before.

With Mr. Bush looking more like a lame duck, Republicans are also concerned that the news coverage devoted to the prosecutors is taking up valuable time. Mr. Bush could not escape the issue on his trip to Latin America-- he wound up explaining his own role in the dismissals and proclaiming his confidence in Mr. Gonzales during a press conference in Mexico-- and now that he is back, the White House is in full damage-control mode.

“Every news day is valuable; you’d rather be on offense than defense,” Charlie Black, a Republican strategist close to the White House said Friday. “There’s some good news out of Iraq this week, and it’s getting relegated to A10.”

Republicans say that is unlikely to change in the immediate future. With the White House delaying until next week a decision on Mr. Rove’s testimony and pressure continuing to build for Mr. Gonzales to resign, the issue is likely to dominate the Sunday talk shows. For now, the best Mr. Bush’s aides can hope for is a quiet weekend for the president at Camp David.

But the trip got off to a rocky start; Mr. Bush’s motorcade got into a minor accident on the way.

But they can spin and maneuver all they want; the public has already figured out that it was all about politicizing the Department of Justice, something a new Newsweek Poll shows that nearly 60% of Americans believe. "Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed–including 45 percent of Republicans–say the ouster of the federal prosecutors was driven by political concerns. Those attitudes seem to reflect a broader view of the Bush administration’s approach. When asked if the administration has introduced politics into too many areas of government, 47 percent said they agree."